Open Mind Intermediate
Additional LifeSkills Lesson
Unit 9  Self and Society: developing your memory
Objective: to provide further practice of this soft skill
within the area of Self and Society (using different
memory tools to help you remember everyday
information).
The three-step strategy for developing this soft skill is:
Step 1: Select the information you need to
remember. (Ex. A)
Step 2: Create a memory tool. (Ex. B, Ex. C, Ex. D)
Step 3: Use the memory tool to help you remember
the information. (Ex. B, Ex. C, Ex. D)
You may decide to highlight this strategy at the
beginning of the lesson, at the end, or as you go
through the exercises in the section. However, if you
prefer to teach this lesson without discussing the
underlying soft skill, this is also possible. The lesson is
designed to be engaging and successful either way.
For more information about teaching life skills and ideas
for highlighting the soft skill, please refer to pp. 93–94
of the Intermediate Teacher’s Book.
Materials:
• board and markers
Lead-in
To set the context for this lesson, ask the students how
good they think their memory is. Test them by asking
them to recall the four parts of the brain and their
different functions from the Intermediate Student’s Book,
p. 113.
If you wish, ask the students to recall the lesson from
the Intermediate Student’s Book pp. 112–113 and say
what they learnt (e.g. that you can use different kinds
of memory tools to help you remember things; that
memory tools can help you prepare for exams etc).
A • After two minutes, ask Student As to sit with
• Put the students into pairs. Ask them to
brainstorm a list of things they have to
remember in their personal life. Set a time limit
of two minutes for this task.
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Elicit some ideas from the class and write them
•
on the left-hand side of the board.
Possible answers
phone numbers; people’s names; things to
do; PINs (personal identification numbers) for
debit and credit cards; computer usernames
and passwords; appointments; social events;
procedures and processes
B • Ask the students what techniques they usually
use to memorise phone numbers and PINs (they
will probably say repetition).
• Write the word chunking on the top right-hand
side of the board. In the middle of the board,
write: 3394412870.
• Explain the following example to illustrate what
this memory tool involves:
We could try to remember each of the ten
numbers individually; however, it’s easier for our
brain to remember fewer items. We can reduce
the number of items we have to remember by
creating ‘chunks’, or groups, of digits. So, we
could memorise three chunks (339-441-2870) or
five chunks (33-94-41-28-70).
• Explain that this technique can also be used with
PINs, For example, the four-digit PIN 9856 is
easier to remember as two chunks: 98-56.
• Write the following list of numbers on the right-
hand side of the board:
PINs Phone numbers
0689 8722104865
9830 4012943576
120989
• Put the students into new pairs and ask them to
decide who is Student A and who is Student B.
• Using the method of chunking, ask Student As to
memorise the PINs and Student Bs to memorise
the phone numbers. Explain they should work
individually at this stage. Set a time limit of two
minutes for this task.
their back to the board and tell their partner the
three PINs. Their partner should confirm if they
are right. They should swap seats and repeat the
process.
Open Mind Intermediate

C • Erase the board and write the following

computer password at the top: mdfi24yt.
reflect
• Remind the students that in the Student’s Book, • Write the following questions on the board:
they looked at creating sentences as a Which memory tool in this lesson was easiest to
memory tool. use? Which was the most difficult? Why?
• Write the following sentence below the password: • Elicit the three memory tools practised in this
my dear friend is 24 years today lesson (chunking, making sentences, Gestalt).
• Show the students that the first letter of each • Encourage a whole-class discussion. The
word corresponds to one of the letters in the students may say they find making sentences
password. Point out that this memory tool is the most difficult technique because it involves
effective because the sentence is easier to a lot of initial effort. If so, point out that because
remember than the letters and numbers. sentences and words are more meaningful than
• Now write the following computer passwords on numbers to most people, we tend to remember
the board: them more easily and for longer, so this
ayfg2cd technique does have its rewards.
ror56tgd
• Put the students into small groups and ask them eXtra: HOMeWOrK
to think of a sentence to help them memorise
Encourage the students to investigate other ways to
each password. Encourage them to use their
memorise information. They could do this online by
dictionaries to help them think of suitable words.
searching for phrases like how to remember things
• Listen to each group’s sentences as a class. Take a
or the phrase memory tools in a search engine.
class vote on the funniest or most memorable one.
In the next class, ask the students to share any
D • Ask the students whether they have a special interesting techniques they discovered.
way to remember how many days are in each
month. If this technique was not mentioned by
any of the students, make fists with both of your
hands, knuckles facing towards you and index
fingers touching.
• Point out that if you count your knuckles and the
indentations between your knuckles as months,
starting with January on the little finger of your
left hand, you will know whether a month has
31 days (knuckles) or 30 days (indentations). The
exception is February, which usually has 28 days
(29 every four years in leap years).
• Tell the students this is known as a Gestalt
technique (from the German word for shapes),
like the technique of making an L with the left
hand to learn left and right hands (as mentioned
in the text on p. 112 of the Student’s Book).
• Ask the students to test each other by taking
turns to ask and answer questions about the
days in a month.

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